The present invention relates to a vehicle for exploration of the atmosphere, and more particularly, its object is an infra-red and perhaps solar montgolfier (hot-air balloon) capable of being piloted reversibly. It is the result of work by Jean-Pierre Pommereau, Research Attache with the CNRS and Alain Hauchecorne, Research Bursary with the Centre National d'Etude Spatiales (CNES), done in the laboratories of the Aeronomy Department of the CNRS.
The use of aerostats, such as balloons, inflated with a gas lighter than air, or montgolfiers, formed of an envelope filled with heated air and inflated by a burner, are already known as vehicles for exploration of the atmosphere. But all known vehicles of this type have the drawback of limited life or flight time, and do not permit vertical exploration of the atmosphere by making alternate vertical movements of wide amplitude, since they can only carry a necessarily limited and quickly exhausted load of fuel, such as propane consumed by a burner heating the air, in the case of a montgolfier or of ballast, in the case of a balloon, or, again, in the latter case, owing to the fact that it is not possible, in order to cause a balloon to reascend, to replace the gas which was previously allowed to escape from the latter to cause it to descend. Generally speaking, these vehicles cannot be piloted in altitude in a reversible fashion, or according to a predetermined law. Furthermore, in order to improve the lift of montgolfiers, use has already been made of black fabrics or films, absorbing solar radiation, to constitute the envelope, in order to obtain additional heating of the air contained by the envelope, which provides supplementary lift, but these solar montgolfiers, which have been tested several times at low altitude, do not make it possible to remedy in decisive fashion, the drawbacks mentioned above.
The problem on which the present invention is based, is to design a vehicle for exploration of the atmosphere, whose life or flight time will be as long as possible and which, in a second stage, will be capable of being piloted reversibly, in order to maneuver in altitude according to a definite law.